---
title: Choosing Which Items Appear in the Sidebar
---
# Choosing Which Items Appear in the Sidebar

## What it is

The projects sidebar can show a range of optional items — AI tools (Ask Omniscio, AI Council, Journal, PM Advisor), productivity apps (Scratchpads, The Vault, Mission Control, Ollert, Arij), creative tools (Image Studio), communication (Supermail, Drip, Screen Recording), and more. You pick which of these appear via the **Sidebar Items** panel.

## Where to find it

Open the projects sidebar header's **⋮ (three-dot) overflow menu** and choose **Sidebar Items**. That opens a small popover of category groups (AI Tools, Productivity, Creative, Communication, Agent Tools, Automation, Developer Tools, System), each with a toggle switch per item. Flip a toggle to show or hide that item in the sidebar — the change is immediate and persists across restarts.

(Previously this panel had its own checklist icon in the header. It now lives **inside the ⋮ menu** to keep the header uncluttered — it is the same panel with the same toggles, one click deeper.)

## How it behaves

### How it works

- Each toggle writes a single `AppSettings` boolean (e.g. `nothariEnabled` for The Vault, `browserEnabled` for Browser, `scratchpadsSidebarEnabled` for Scratchpads) via `updateSetting`, so visibility is a per-item setting rather than one list.
- **Labs features** (unreleased items behind feature flags) appear in the picker at reduced opacity with a "Labs" badge and a tooltip reading "Go to Labs to enable this feature." They become toggleable once enabled in Settings > Labs.
- The panel is a **controlled popover anchored to the ⋮ button** — it shares that button as its anchor with the overflow menu itself and positions through the shared `useAnchoredMenu` recipe, so it always stays fully on-screen even when the sidebar is dragged narrow.
- Close it with the X in the panel header, the Escape key, or a click outside it.

## For agents

### Where the wiring lives

- Panel + rows: `src/renderer/src/features/dashboard/SidebarItemPicker.tsx` (a controlled popover — it takes a `menu` prop and renders no trigger of its own).
- The item list + category grouping: `src/renderer/src/features/dashboard/sidebar-item-picker-items.ts`.
- The ⋮-menu "Sidebar Items" row + the shared anchor that opens the panel: `src/renderer/src/features/dashboard/ProjectsSidebar.tsx` (via `SidebarHeaderMenu`).
- Positioning contract (the shared-anchor invariant): `.claude/memory/contracts/sidebar-header-popover-contract.md`.

## Related

Hiding a whole sidebar is a different control — the sidebar-collapse page covers that — while the funnel filter and sort-by-usage modes in the same header change what the list shows without removing any item.